Milk or Meat
But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. . . I Corinthians 1:3
When talking about the Corinthians spiritual immaturity and their inability to handle the meat of the word, all Bible teachers seem to handle it the same way; The Corinthians couldn’t understand deep theology, or had no interest in it, therefore he couldn’t give it to them. I am starting to think that this interpretation may be missing Paul’s point completely.
What if his point was this, I cannot give you the meat scripturally because, you will become more inflated with pride and distort doctrine to your own ends. I have seen many of us theological types take doctrine and distort it by magnifying one truth and explaining away another A theologically astute fleshly Christian, can often do far more damage than an ignorant fleshly Christian.
Concerning the doctrines of Grace I like the way Spurgeon puts it.
“No man ever learns anything aright, unless he is taught of the Spirit. You may learn election, and you may know it so that you shall be damned by it, if you are not taught of the Holy Ghost; for I have known some who have learned election to their soul’s destruction; they have learned it so that they said they were of the elect, whereas, they had no marks, no evidences, and no works of the Holy Ghost in their souls. There is a way of learning truth in Satan’s college, and holding it in licentiousness; but if so, it shall be to your souls as poison to your veins and prove your everlasting ruin.”1
I agree with him thoroughly, doctrine in the hands of a fleshly man can wreak havoc. I have a personal theory that divine sovereignty and election may have been the very doctrines Paul avoided with the Corinthians for this very reason. When we zealous young Calvinists believe it is our God given duty to explain TULIP to every carnal Christian, and heathen we can find, and insist on working it into every presentation of the gospel, we often do more harm than good.
1. A Sermon (No. 5) Delivered on Sabbath Evening, January 21, 1855, by the REV. C. H. Spurgeon at New Park Street Chapel, Southwark
Jeremiah Dusenberry says:
December 20th, 2009 at 8:58 am
“God is ‘the truth.’ The Bible is the ‘truth about the Truth.’ Theology is the ‘truth about the truth about the Truth.’ Christian people live in these many truths about the Truth, and because of them, have not ‘the Truth.’ Hungry, beaten, and drugged, we had forgotten theology and the Bible. We had forgotten the ‘truths about the Truth,’ therefore we lived in ‘the Truth.’ -Richard Wurmbrand on disputation between believers about things that do not help believers who are being tortured, “Tortured for Christ.”
austin says:
December 20th, 2009 at 10:19 am
I am of the impression that many of us argumentative theological types will fall away during persecution, while many whom we would deem simplistic in the faith will endure it. We should be more concerned with faithfulness and fruitfulness, than we are with looking smart.